Called at the BMW dealer at lunchtime. Not the ideal customer with weather gear and a windswept demeanor, but they were very amenable. Had a crawl over a 320 touring in the showroom, and checked the three key measures. It's four inches wider than the Golf, but that leaves five inches per side in the drive, so that's tight but OK. Rear seat legroom is much better, and the rear seat backrest although flat, is quite comfortable. Finally the boot space is visibly bigger than the Golf. So far so good then. I've booked a test drive in an automatic on Monday, so I'll make a judgement after that. I've also tried to book an appointment at a VW dealer to check out a GTD, but no response so far. I might still go over on Saturday if they don't get back to me. As I said at the start of this thread, I'm not a BMW fan particularly, but having had a sit in this one, the interior is better than I'd anticipated, and the auto box gets such a good write up by Autocar, it would be a shame not to try one. Cast your mind back and Montezooma had to have a new clutch plate in his manual car. There's a big choice on the BMW website of nearly new with significant discounts which is also tempting.
And so the story continues.
